Smokebomb
by mimma
Summary: "The only one who can catch me, is me." Heistfic. Conperson AU.


**5pm; Van.**

Kise smiled too much. That was the first thing. It was a nice smile, admittedly, lighting up his million-dollar face with a puppyish charm and mischief. Somehow this combined with the sly tilt of his eyelashes to give an impression of complete sincerity and candour.

It was fake as hell. Kasamatsu glared at him and drummed his fingers on the van's walls.

"What's wrong with my suit," he said.

"Nothing," said Kise. "Nothing, for, I mean, work, or the office or… I hope you don't do anything in that suit other than work, sempai, but I'm just saying, we're going to something- someplace _nice_ tonight."

"While we're going to be stuck here," said Moriyama, settled in for a long night of surveillance. "Stuck here while the two of you schmooze with girls and women and ladies and _girls…_" he sighed, extravagantly, eyes aglow with reflected glory. "Society girls with money and looks and all that taste…"

"I don't care," snapped Kasamatsu, smacking the back of Kise's head, engaged in staring desolately at the buttons of Kasamatsu's suit. "This is the only suit I have on me, so unless you want me to strip off and go in naked, this is what I have."

"I haven't seen you without your shirt off yet, sempai," said Kise. The _yet_ was accompanied by a purr that had once swindled a Hong Kong financier out of sixty million dollars. Kasamatsu manfully resisted. "But somehow I think that would be unwise."

"I'm NOT GOING IN THERE NAKED," yelled Kasamatsu. Kobori winced as his voice reverbed around their can. "I'll look like law enforcement. Deal with it. You don't even have to talk to me all night. And stop calling me sempai. I'm not your senior here. You're not one of us."

"But you are!" Kise said, brightly. "You're my senior in the ways of being… law-abiding!" He sparkled at all of them, and laid his hand on his heart. "And I am law-abiding now, sempai. I really really am. On the straight and narrow."

Kasamatsu shared a long look with everyone else in the van. He knew that tonight, there were going to be too many rich people in too small a space with too many shiny things Kise wasn't going to be able to keep his fingers off, and Kise had very clever fingers. Clever and larcenous. Not to mention the hordes of people who would be throwing themselves at him tonight, also ripe for conning. If they didn't _need_ him up there tonight… it was like throwing alcohol to an alcoholic.

Kise tipped his head to the side and smiled at Kasamatsu. Kise was really almost _too_ pretty to be a conman, but that was one of his assets; Kasamatsu had seen Kise disappear right into a crowd, no makeup, no disguises, nothing. He knew how to steal. He _liked_ to steal. The money itself seemed to flow through his fingers like water. He liked to steal _too much,_ bouncing and smiling with excitement, grinning at every step of the con like he loved it.

But, Kasamatsu supposed- that's how Kise got caught in the first place.

.0.

**5pm; Ballroom.**

"Ah do appreciate ya help bringing me around ta exhibit tonight," said Imayoshi. Not that it had exactly been closed, but the run-through of the extensive security measures were something better left to Imayoshi's highly-trained team. Sometimes… you just needed to get a feel for the hunting grounds, before you tried to beat out some grouse.

"No problem," said Momoi. "But really, this was awfully short notice- good thing we're all set up here, I've been run absolutely ragged getting things done in time for this- this-"

"Shindig," said Imayoshi, looking at Momoi Satsuki, all dolled-up and perfectly put-together. The exhibit and auction, as far as he could see, was running in absolutely tip-top shape. Maybe she was worth the cost of those lovely gems nestling sweetly between her lovelier breasts. Interesting, how she afforded those on a lowly private curator's salary. "Y'aren't one of the usual art experts, are you? I haven't worked with you in Tora Insurance before."

"Oh, I don't work for Tora," said Momoi, blinking at him. "The foundation hired me to come in and curate the odds and ends coming in from all these private collections- and then when Mi-chan got so terribly sick, I had to step in and so far I've just been thanking my lucky stars the auction house had their own art expert working on their end to collate _their_ acquisitions. It really has been quite exhausting." She smiled fondly at what, to Imayoshi's eye, was a frankly terrible statue valued at upwards of six hundred k. He'd checked out the backgrounds of most everyone involved, of course. Very convenient, that 'Mi-chan' would fall sick just as the window for verifying another hire closed but before the auction could reasonably loan one of their own out before their own items had to start coming in. Momoi's sole domain was the hundreds of millions of dollars in private collections and museum loans that would be set out for rich people to put their drinks on and loudly declare weren't all that much when you got to take a look at them. And Tora was covering the whole. Damn. Thing.

"But rewarding," he prompted her, watching her personally reach out and adjust a painting just a little- no motion detector on _that_ one, obviously. She watched him under her eyelashes. She'd heard- more than heard- about Tora's hotshot insurance investigators and their less-than-legal ways of search and seizure. She'd heard about quite a lot of it, and she wanted to have no truck with it. These people didn't care about the art. They looked at- why, at that stunning representation of the relative balance of fear and love and pity, and saw only dollar signs. Momoi knew that if anyone was going to have to stand up for the beautiful pieces here tonight, well, it was going to have to be her. Dai-chan didn't care about art in the slightest, but at least he didn't bother to pretend he did.

"It's all so beautiful," she said. "And tonight- well, tonight is going to be utterly spectacular! We've been working towards it for so long."

.0.

**5pm; Nice place.**

"God, tonight's going to be a nightmare," muttered Kagami, going through his mail at the kitchen table. "You know you don't have to come," he called to the shower.

Kuroko walked out, rubbing his hair, another towel slung low on his hips. Kagami swallowed a gulp at the sight of Kuroko's hipbones, the light trail of hair on pale, pale skin. You wouldn't have thought that Kuroko was all that attractive upon just plain looking at him, but he certainly grew on you. Looking at the faint smile on his face, he knew it. After their pickup game, Kuroko had made Kagami come to his house to pick out a suitable suit, and it lay over the sofa in Kuroko's apartment. Kuroko walked leisurely over to it, pink with steam.

"I wouldn't miss it," he said. "You're actually getting dressed up. This is an invaluable opportunity."

"It's going to be boring as fuck," warned Kagami. "Bad art… pretentious boring people… free drinks, so pretentious boring drunk asshole people…"

"You're going, though," said Kuroko, voice floating over Kagami's shoulder like a lure. Kagami heard the towel hit the floor but kept his eyes facing resolutely forward. Casual exhibitionism. Lovely. The curtains weren't even drawn.

"I have to," said Kagami. Man, how had he gotten _here_? "Some friends are passing through, and some stuff of mine is going up, so I have to be there."

"If you're there," said Kuroko, slipping into the seat opposite Kagami with his shirt collar gaping open, skin still pink and flushed with steam, and smiled at Kagami as he put his pale and clever hands over Kagami's. "Then I can't think of anywhere else that I would rather be."

.0.

**6pm; Street.**

Riko pulled the dress over her head and shimmied into it. Backseat of the car or no, Hyuuga resolutely fixed his eyes on the road. "Zip me up," she ordered Kiyoshi.

"Sure," said Kiyoshi. He bent over her bare back as Riko adjusted the holster on her thigh. The fall of her dress just covered it without being too much of a standout, and it kept her baton close, not that Hyuuga would have regretted seeing Riko carry a gun. The clutch, obviously, was for her taser.

Hyuuga sighed and was glad that he and Kiyoshi weren't going to be needed on the floor for this one. On one hand, that meant Riko was doing the hobnobbing, and she had better eyes than him and the patience for it any day. On the other… Kiyoshi beamed at Hyuuga's suspicious stare reflected in the mirror.

More than anyone, Hyuuga wasn't sure he bought Kiyoshi's story of being on the straight and narrow now. Riko had taken him onto her team the same way she'd scooped Hyuuga up when he'd left the force, but even then Kiyoshi's history of high-priced scores wasn't going to just go away. Just because no one had ever managed to actually charge him with anything didn't mean he wasn't still a thief, and didn't the tongue-twistiness of _that_ suit Kiyoshi's bland smile just fine.

Riko had decided they needed a thief to catch a thief, and Kiyoshi's experience had indeed turned out to be invaluable on the jobs where he hadn't bumbled his way into catching the criminal outright. Riko's dad had been company legend, but as a team, they were working their way up through the ranks just like anyone else. With Kiyoshi, they were doing it like superstars. Their third member wasn't… _bad_, really. Even Hyuuga admitted that. But Kiyoshi had a very flexible definition of morals and no sense whatsoever when it came to shiny things with shady histories. Several people had made it clear they expected Kiyoshi to fall back into his old ways eventually, and to take Riko and Hyuuga with him when he went.

Imayoshi himself had requested them for this assignment, though. He'd asked them to bring Kiyoshi along as they did it. He met Riko's eyes in the mirror, also dwelling uneasily on Kiyoshi's smile. Whatever trouble Imayoshi expected Kiyoshi to get in, they both knew that tonight, Hyuuga was going to have to be the one to keep him out of it.

.0.

**6pm; Someone else's house. **

"Takao," said Midorima. "Let's go over again what you'll do tonight."

"Not touch anything," recited Takao. "Not speak to anyone. Not embarrass you."

Midorima frowned, but Takao waved him off. "Geeze, yes, the plan, the plan. I _have the plan_. It is in my head. We have gone over it so many times it is _burned into my brain_."

"Opportunities like this don't come around that often," said Midorima. "I'm lucky today. We have the best compatibility. Everything is set up. I have done all that I can."

Takao shook his head. Man, working with a legend was a trip and a half, but Takao hadn't exactly counted on encountering someone like Midorima when he'd been setting up some rich old guy and the other thief had made him right in the middle of it. And then, calm as you please, he'd pulled off his own con, incidentally taken out Takao's mark, and before Takao had known it he'd been driving Midorima's car away, tipping his peaked cap to the security as they ran past. Within that first meeting, Takao had learned how to tell a forged Rembrandt from an _excellent_ forged Rembrandt, how to swirl port properly, and that as a Scorpio, he had the best compatibility with Cancers.

Things had… spiralled from there. Midorima, Takao had discovered, was the best damn forger he'd ever seen; thievery was just something to keep him in food, in materials, and in contact with great art. He did crazy shit all the time, like carry around lucky items, only paint when he was most 'compatible' with the artist and he was _crazy_, utterly, absolutely; he'd spend weeks sanding down a sculpture just so because the artist had thought about painting it in the waning phase of the moon or something, and then he'd end up smacking the mark in the face with it to sell the con. Takao knew that at least half of their business was pure nerve, but Midorima's boundless confidence during a con could suck a normal person's soul out.

_Before_ the con, Midorima's nervy rules could drive a normal person to smash his head in.

Takao had asked once how old Midorima was, when he'd emerged from the hotel's bathroom with a dripping head no longer decorously salt-and-pepper, and received instead a treatise on how their mark had been a late-born Capricorn Metal Rooster, and how Midorima's own disguise of Libra Wood Sheep had then uniquely set them up to deceive him in the most perfect possible way. Takao had looked at the lines of Midorima's long limbs as he walked about the room lecturing him primly, and then discovered that really, he did not care. It seemed impossible that so much knowledge and experience could be contained in someone who did not look like he could be all that much older than Takao himself, but Midorima was a consummate professional. He could pull off any number of roles… so long as he did not have open his mouth. His costumes and forgeries were usually perfect, but his acting... well, there was a reason Takao had made _him_, that first con. Takao had watched him struggle in a role, and then laughed and laughed and laughed until he got roped into it as well.

Now, he had Takao for the talking and the pretending. Takao was _good_ at pretending. Very, very good at pretending.

It couldn't last, of course. These things in his line of work never did. But this was one hell of a ride.

What Takao was going to do tonight: not touch anything. Not speak to anyone (hell of a relief, if half the things Midorima was direly predicting would come true). Not embarrass Midorima, which was code for _don't get caught_.

Not get caught.

.0.

**7pm; Roof.**

Aomine pulled off his mover's uniform and tossed it down the incineration chute. Down there, it would be ash first thing tomorrow morning, and no one would be the wiser. Hell and a half to get into the KHG building today, with security and service staff swarming everywhere. Much, much easier to get into the building next door, and then…. Aomine squinted down the side. Maybe eight, ten stories to get to the helicopter landing pad, then further up a few stories into an open air-duct, unscrew the grilles, crawl for a mile or so to the vaults? Easy-peasy.

Or after he got down there, the door to that one would be pretty easy to pick, just like this one had been. Hell, Aomine almost hadn't had to pick it. He'd just hit the door juuuust right, and it had popped open.

But locks liked Aomine. He'd heard a lot about the security in the KHG Building- just enough to make it interesting, but also enough to set any number of people Aomine knew to squawking about jail terms and insanity. Satsuki wasn't going to like that he was dropping in, but what about it? As long as she got her precious art out onto the floor, she'd be happy. He didn't plan to touch any of it, anyway. She didn't need to _fuss_.

Looking down from his perch, he picked out the vans and trucks moving into position. The trusted movers for the auction, yeah, moving in convoy; the municipal utility van parked a delicate distance away, but suits never looked _up_; the slew of cars driving up and releasing mid-level cogs into the building. Everyone who was working tonight was there and preparing, getting things into place.

Aomine set up the ropes. He needed to get to work too.

.0.

**7pm; Foyer.**

Alex flashed her card at the guard and snorted while she had to wait for someone to verify her id to let her in. And then someone to verify that.

"I have an invite, you know," she said. "Also, I've worked here for years. My name is up there on the sign and everything."

"The invite gets you to the public floor, an hour from now," said their chief of security. He frowned at her. He was training little hims everywhere, too. They were exactly as humourless and efficient as he was, which was good for KHG, but boring for her. "You know that everything else is supposed to be locked down until Tora has-"

"I'm getting a start on the open bar," she said, not wanting to go into the whole rigmarole all over again. "I just want to- look at some of the things on the block tonight. I'm going to miss them."

"I'm not surprised," came a new voice. "I must say I'm very impressed at KHG's private collection."

Alex shot a betrayed look at Nakatani. He shrugged. "He insisted."

Walking sedately towards them was Imperial's man on the job, looking perfectly turned out and absolutely in control, speaking calmly and authoritatively into an earpiece.

"We have the highest standards of quality for our services," said Akashi. His cool, considering gaze raked over her dress, her bag, her heels. Once he'd apparently satisfied himself she wasn't smuggling anything in to mess up his operation- in this dress, _ha_- he nodded to Nakatani, who let her through. Security was positively _crawling_, and it crawled up her own spine. At least they weren't his, though, as far as Alex had been allowed to know. Tora Insurance was providing their own, and KHG's own staff was on-site. Service staff also moved everywhere, refreshing flower arrangements- unless that was an installation- and various suited men moved among them too. Alex had the feeling they weren't going to know half of who had people here, or why. Akashi watched them all out with the air of a parade-general.

"What is it you do, again," said Alex. He never answered this question, but Alex considered it a duty to needle him with her suspicion.

"Ms Garcia, please," said Akashi, as he usually did, perfectly polite and conciliatory. "I'm just here to make sure everything goes as planned."


End file.
